It was suggested earlier this week somewhere in the Italian media that the Italian navy deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for its Mare Nostrum operation, a campaign that has saved literally tens of thousands of lives and counting, this summer. 

There are certainly numerous other extremely worthy recipients for this year’s prize but, at least from the central Mediterranean’s point of view, the Italian navy has done the most in this region to save lives and to live up to the formidable challenge of humanitarianism that the situation presents.

The Mare Nostrum operation was launched by Italy as a direct response to the double Lampedusa tragedies that took place last October and which claimed hundreds of would-be asylum seekers’ lives. Since then, it has manned Malta’s stretch of the Mediterranean all summer and it has saved thousands more lives, over 70,000 to be precise, in the process.

We must not, however be deluded. There has been no slowdown in the numbers of irregular migrants taking that perilous voyage from the shores of North Africa bound for Europe. In fact, the total number of migrants reaching Italy’s shores so far this year has now topped the 100,000 mark and reached 101,480 as of Friday.

Malta has not been completely inundated itself, reason would dictate, because Italy has stepped in, monitored and controlled our mutual stretch of the Mediterranean. Malta, of course, has pitched its lot into the effort as well, with the AFM having coordinated and been involved in several notable rescues at sea this summer.

Italy, supported by Malta, recently called on the European Union to take over the responsibility for the Mare Nostrum operation but so far there has been no confirmation of the European Union’s willingness or otherwise to do so.

Italy, through its laudable Mare Nostrum project, has virtually taken control of the situation in the central Mediterranean. Italy has shown its determination to ensure that there are no more repeats of the double Lampedusa tragedies last October. And it is performing admirably.

Italy has effectively stepped in where the EU has, for one reason or another, feared to tread. And calls by both Italy and Malta for the EU to assume operational control of Mare Nostrum have not been met, despite all the EU’s fine words.

But on Friday Italian Home Affairs Minister Angelino Alfano said that while Italy is “proud to be saving lives” and preventing the Mediterranean from becoming a “lake of death”, Italy’s Mare Nostrum operation, which has been in operation since last October, has now run its course. Alfano insisted that the EU must now take over control of the operation Italy has developed and set in motion. Anything short of that, Alfano said, and Italy will have to “take decisions”.

Over the past year, most of the migrants have been refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war and Eritrea’s brutal military service, according to the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR.

The agency estimated last month that around 800 irregular migrants had died in the Mediterranean so far this year, compared with 600 in the whole of 2013 and 500 in 2012. The bodies of many victims are never found, making calculations of the death toll extremely approximate and probably grossly underestimated.

This continuous human tragedy is, as our Prime Minister once accurately put it, turning the Mediterranean into a cemetery.

And in the meantime, the European Union, which fashions itself as the world’s great humanitarian bloc, the defender of the voiceless and the epitome of humanitarianism, sits back and watches these tragedies unfold one after another while it allows mainly Italy and Malta, and soon even a very well-intentioned NGO, take care of the rescue operations, to pluck the survivors from the unforgiving sea and to deal with the aftermaths of one tragedy after another.

This is not about burden sharing or taking Malta’s already settled refugees off these islands’ hands for resettlement elsewhere in the bloc. This is not a cry for resources to deal with the ‘problem’. This is, pure and simple, about saving lives – no more and no less.

Malta, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Spain – the EU’s southern frontier states – are blue in the face from repeatedly begging for real, tangible EU solutions to the yearly crises they face. And those crises are about the mass loss of life on their very doorsteps and, quite frankly, it is the rest of the EU that should be more than a little red in the face by now.

Have we as Europeans become so desensitised to the plight of these people? After all the years of these desperate individuals seeking entry to Europe – in so many ways their perceived Promised Land – after fleeing war, famine and persecution in their home countries, it is unfathomable how Europe as a whole has not risen up to face this humanitarian crisis?

Europe as a whole must be held collectively responsible for the deaths in Mare Nostrum because of its inaction, as well as for the hundreds of deaths resulting from the double Lampedusa tragedies last October and the hundreds if not thousands of deaths.

Could Europe possibly be so foolish as to think that if a problem is ignored long enough it will simply go away, that the multiple geopolitical situations in Africa and the Middle East will somehow iron themselves out and that the migration phenomenon will die a natural death?

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso recently thanked Italy for “saving thousands of lives in the Mediterranean” through its Mare Nostrum search-and-rescue operations. That is all well and good but it is now high time that the EU itself takes ownership of Mare Nostrum, as Italy and Malta have been jointly lobbying in favour of.

It is, after all, only when the whole of the EU bands together to solve what is a truly pan-European issue that real and tangible results will be forthcoming.

The EU must, now and for the last time, commit itself to addressing this perpetual humanitarian crisis and say, once and for all, that “enough is enough”. One shudders to think what would happen should Italy call it quits on Mare Nostrum without a real, effective alternative having been set in place.

Mare Nostrum: our sea, our responsibility.  There are desperate people dying in the seas around us, on our doorstep and in our backyard and, for better or for worse, it is our responsibility – and not our burden – as a civilised, humanitarian nation to make sure that as few of these unfortunates as possible die in Mare Nostrum.